Stalin to be elected DMK president soon

DMK working president M K Stalin, prominent personalities and the general public on Thursday paid homage at the burial site of departed leader M Karunanidhi.

Sources said that the general council of the DMK would be convened soon to formally elect Stalin as the next president of the party, to fill the void left by his legendary father.

Meanwhile, the row over allocation of burial space for late DMK chief M Karunanidhi continued with the opposition party on Thursday accusing the government of denying land on the Marina beachfront due to ‘vendetta’, a charge dismissed as ‘baseless’ by the ruling AIADMK.

The doyen of Tamil politics, Karunanidhi passed away on August 7 after a prolonged illness. ‘Kalaignar’ breathed his last at Chennai’s Kauvery Hospital, where he was undergoing treatment for a Urinary Tract Infection (UTI).

Chennai on Wednesday appeared to be in the grip of a shutdown with shuttered shops and businesses and most vehicles going off the roads as a mark of respect to Karunanidhi.

Unlike the AIADMK, which neither had a second line leadership nor announced anyone as possible successor to Ms Jayalalithaa, who took over reigns of the party leadership after the demise of her political mentor MGR, the DMK has in fact found an able leader in Stalin.